Archive for the ‘Richard Arbib’ tag

Not often does one car collector get an entire concours class all to himself, but the organizers of this year’s Amelia Island Concours made an exception for Packard collector Ralph Marano – not because he paid them off, but because he’s put together a unique collection of Packard one-off, show, experimental, and concept cars, 10 of which he plans to bring to Amelia.

Marano, of Westfield, New Jersey, began collecting Packards in the late 1970s, but said he doesn’t quite recall when he decided to assemble every existing Packard show car, particularly those from the 1950s. “It began with me going out and searching for them, then over the years it inverted, and people started calling me,” he said. Along the way, he’s had to piece together all of the cars’ varied histories and origins, some quite a bit more complex than the dream cars that GM, Ford and Chrysler built at the same time.

Take, for example, the Vignale Packard. Based on a prewar Packard 120 chassis, the coachbuilder Vignale draped it with an envelope body much wider than the original. “The steering wheel is so far toward the center of the car, that when I have a passenger in it with me, they’re just about sitting on my lap,” Marano said. Marano claims Vignale began work on it in 1938 – 10 years before the coachbuilding firm was founded – and the partially completed car was hidden away during World War II, then finished and revealed after the war (some sources claim 1948, others 1951). Whatever the backstory, the convertible body bears little resemblance to any other Packard of any era, with only a hint of Packard’s trademark tombstone grille.

Other Packard one-offs of the era were certainly built for show – to prove that Packard was still in the game and could still hold its own against the competition from Detroit. The Richard Arbib-designed Packard Pan America – which ended up influencing the production Caribbean – traveled the show circuit in 1952, as did the Dick Teague-designed Balboa in 1953, Teague’s Request in 1955, and the Dick Macadam-designed Predictor in 1956. Some weren’t built just for static display: The Panther of 1954 (which Teague originally named Gray Wolf II) debuted at Daytona Beach, where Jim Rathmann reportedly ran its supercharged straight-eight up to an unofficial record of 131.1 MPH. And still others – like the Macauley coupe – seemed to have been built expressly as executives’ cars.

Packard Macaluey coupe. Photo courtesy Glenmoor Gathering.

Nor were many of them pure one-offs. Six Pan Americans were eventually built, four Panthers, two Balboas, and two Monte Carlos. In all, Marano said he has amassed both 1953 Monte Carlos, the Request, two of the Panthers, two Henney-built one-offs, the Vignale, one Pan American, the Macauley coupe, and both Balboas (for those counting, that makes 12; he said that one of the Henneys and one of the Monte Carlos will not be joining the other 10 traveling to Amelia). The Predictor remains in the Studebaker National Museum in South Bend, Indiana, for perpetuity (though Marano said he calls the museum up once a year just to let them know he’ll take it off their hands if need be), and Marano said he knows the whereabouts of the other two Panthers and four more Pan Americans.

While Marano has displayed his concepts and one-offs en masse before – at the Fairfield County Concours d’Elegance in September 2009 – that showing included six of the cars. In addition to four more cars, Marano said that this showing will be the first for the freshly restored Request and Monte Carlo.

The Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance will take place March 7-9, 2014. For more information, visit AmeliaConcours.org.

* Perhaps one of the last vehicles I’d expect somebody to convert to electric would be the Chevrolet Corvette, but Keith Stegath is doing just that, as we learned from Gearbox Magazine this week.

* You may recall Richard Arbib from the Metropolitan-based Astra-Gnome, but he designed many more cars, including the Porsche-based Starfire, which wasn’t actually built, but still warranted a look from Forgotten Fiberglass this week.